June 9, 2025 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
- NASA still uncertain about next Starliner test flight
The agency still doesn’t know if the next flight will be manned or cargo, and is still aiming for a launch in early ’26. Nothing has changed still its last statement at the end of March.
- Analysis of status of ULA’s Vulcan rocket suggests launch cadence in 2nd half of 2025 will be robust, possibly 2x per month
Only the first half of the video has new information. The company says it has 15 rockets in storage ready to fly, and customers screaming for them to get off the ground. We shall see.
- NASA releases image by Mars Odyssey of the giant Martian volcano Arsia Mons
The image is cool, looking at the volcano obliquely as it peeks up through a layer of clouds
- On this day in 1988 astronomers using the Kuiper Airborne Observatory made the first direct observation of Pluto’s atmosphere
That atmosphere comes and goes depending on where Pluto is in its 250-year-long year, orbiting the Sun in a relatively eccentric orbit.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
- NASA still uncertain about next Starliner test flight
The agency still doesn’t know if the next flight will be manned or cargo, and is still aiming for a launch in early ’26. Nothing has changed still its last statement at the end of March.
- Analysis of status of ULA’s Vulcan rocket suggests launch cadence in 2nd half of 2025 will be robust, possibly 2x per month
Only the first half of the video has new information. The company says it has 15 rockets in storage ready to fly, and customers screaming for them to get off the ground. We shall see.
- NASA releases image by Mars Odyssey of the giant Martian volcano Arsia Mons
The image is cool, looking at the volcano obliquely as it peeks up through a layer of clouds
- On this day in 1988 astronomers using the Kuiper Airborne Observatory made the first direct observation of Pluto’s atmosphere
That atmosphere comes and goes depending on where Pluto is in its 250-year-long year, orbiting the Sun in a relatively eccentric orbit.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
I’d love to see it – I really would – but no one has ever ramped up launch cadence this fast with a brand new rocket.
Yes. Everything Vulcan-related has been indeterminate but Real Soon Now for years. I do not anticipate that we have reached Peak-Lucy-and-Football for Vulcan yet. Two launches a month by year’s end sounds as funny as any dialogue line from Airplane – e.g. “Looks like I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue.”
Not that Blue is exactly burning up the flame trenches either. Mission number two for New Glenn is now supposedly NET August 15. I’m not planning to bet the rent on that.
A meme comes to mind – Trump’s head Photoshopped in place of Lloyd Bridges’s over the line, “Looks like I picked the wrong day to cancel SpaceX contracts.”